“Pays an impressive tribute to the new renaissance in African-American literature.” –New York Times Book Review “The cultural and literary achievements of black American women are examined and celebrated in some 20 enjoyable, erudite essays by prominent scholars, critics, and activists.” –Publishers Weekly This book is the first comprehensive collection of critical and theoretical essays to explore the literary and multi-cultural traditions of Black American women in many genres over a broad span of time. The essays explore cultural and literary experience in a wide context and offer a variety of critical theoretical constructs in which to view that experience. The editors have written excellent introductions providing both historical and comparative discussions of the contemporary literary renaissance.

The book also includes a valuable bibliography of selected English-language works by Black women in the Americas from the 1970s to the present. Contributors: Angela Y. Davis, June Jordan, Gloria I.

Joseph, David Ames Curtis, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Robert J. Fehrenbach, Daphne Duval Harrison, Billie Jean Young, Regine Altagrace Latortue, Calvin Hernton, Barbara Smith, Joanne V. Gabbin, Nellie Y.

McKay, Barbara Omolade, Vashti Crutcher Lewis, Barbara Christian, Zala Chandler, Rudolph P. Byrd, Chinosole, Gale P. Jackson.

Joanne M. Braxton is Cummings Professor of American Studies and English at the College of William and Mary and the author of Sometimes I Think of Maryland, a collection of poetry, and Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition. Andree Nicola McLaughlin is Professor or Humanities at Medgar Evers College/CUNY and author of Through the Barrel of Her Consciousness: Contemporary Black Women’s Literature and Activism in Cross-Cultural Perspective.